


if you find yourself concerned by the workings of outer space

by polyommatusblues



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/M, Half-Sibling Incest, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-30
Updated: 2015-07-30
Packaged: 2018-04-12 02:43:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4462403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyommatusblues/pseuds/polyommatusblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Thinking about the galaxies makes me feel so small, but in a good way. In a way like what I say or do or no matter how many times I fail or if I let A win, if he gets away with everything and kills me and kills Aria and Emily and Hanna and Ali and anyone else, all this is still going to exist. The planets will still turn like clockwork. I am not even a cog in this machine.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you find yourself concerned by the workings of outer space

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for incest. Post-6x03.
> 
> So I don't know if I developed this enough??? If my characters feel shallow or the plot feels too scattered or what, let me know!

When she waltzes into your office (because every walk, every stride she takes can only be called a _waltz_ ), all you can think is, _Oh Jesus, not again._ Because you know how these things work with her, how she never comes to you unless she wants something. How she never actually wants you.

She asks if you recognize a name, a Charles DiLaurentis, and of course you say no. Of course her ridiculous rabbit trails do not lead to the truth. And as soon as she’s sure you really don’t know this mystical person, of course she leaves.

It’s been like this for as long as you can remember: her, stepping in and out of your life like the push and pull of knitting needles. You resigned yourself a long time ago to the fact that familial relations obviously nothing in Rosewood, especially ones shrouded, like everything else, in so much secrecy.

The memory hits you as she’s reaching for the door. Of course, she notices. “You do know the name.”

Visions swim in your brain of you and another boy, exactly like you but less tangible, less real. “No, no… just a coincidence,” you stutter, because there’s no way anyone would know about this. There’s no way this would matter to someone out to make so many people’s lives hell. “Charlie, just Charlie.” You sigh. “But my dad told you the truth.”

“About what?”

You reply, “Charlie doesn’t exist.”

.

She’s the first one you text after your dad drops the bomb, and you know you shouldn’t, you know what she wants is answers and what you _need_ is someone to understand, but you text her anyway. And she, surprisingly, comes running.

 “Jason, I got your text, what’s—” You meet her on the first porch step and wrap your arms around her lithe form, crushing her to you like maybe if you hold onto her tight enough, she will be the one thing in your life that is constant, the one thing in your life that isn’t a lie, that doesn’t disappear.

You try not to think about how she already did disappear, for just over three weeks. You don’t think about the nights you spent once again on the wrong end of a bottle, holed up in your room because unlike Toby, who could openly cry in public for the love of his life, unlike Melissa, who could claim relation based on history as well as blood, you had no right to mourn any part of her. You still don’t.

She rubs stripes up and down your back until you compose yourself enough to pull away from her, ask, “Can we talk in your house?” and listen to her breathe: “Of course.”

The house is big and cold and empty, and all you want to do is grab her in a quilt and tangle it around you both until she is warm again. Until she can feel the tips of her fingers again, because whether she knows it or not, you have noticed their constant drumming on her thigh and, in their stillness, a steady shake.

She leads you up the staircase to her bedroom and motions for you to take a seat on the bed. She shuts the door behind her, and although all the lights are off in your house, she draws her curtains.

You perch on the bottom corner of her bed but when she sits down, it isn’t very far away, or at least, not as far as it could be. For a long stretch of a moment, neither of you speaks. She is patient. Finally, the words tumble out.

“He was never imaginary… this whole time, he was real.” When her eyes light up, you know she isn’t interested in how this affects you. Of course she isn’t. She only wants to solve the puzzle, to get herself and her friends out of danger by finding the son of a bitch who has been terrorizing them.

In a way, you can’t blame her. Not everyone carries a torch for their previously unknown half-sibling. And in a way, her curiosity, her search for answers at any expense, is one of the things that draws you to her the most. Unlike most, she does not run away from engulfing flames; she has too strong of a desire to figure out why they burn.

Beside you, moving no closer but no farther away, she draws her legs up onto the bed to pretzel them underneath her. She folds her arms into her lap and leans forward—closer to your words, but not to you. Of course she doesn’t move closer to you.

“Charlie was my older brother, only by a few months. Obviously, he went crazy or something, I don’t exactly know what happened there, but my parents put him in Radley before I was old enough to really remember him. Early enough to essentially wipe all my memories of him.”

If you squint, you think you can see concern etched on her face. Sympathy. She is quiet, rolling this new information around in her brain.

“Where is he now?” She asks. You laugh bitterly.

“He hung himself in Radley when he was sixteen. According to daddy dearest, karma is a bitch.” When she places her hand on your arm in a comforting gesture and squeezes, you don’t allow your chest room to swell with a kind of emotion that’s a little harder to bite back.

“Jason, I’m sorry,” she breathes, and there it is, there is the heavy, gray feeling slipping between your ribs again—

She takes your hand suddenly, laces your fingers with hers like she’s tying shoes. Asks, “When’s the last time you got out of your own head?”

You laugh a little more and try to ignore how hollow it sounds. “You’re not asking me if I want pot, are you?” It’s meant to be a joke, but her jaw hinges just slightly enough to concern you. The backpedaling starts. “Spencer, it’s been so long. I was kidding, I know you. Besides, I’m done with all that stuff anyway.”

Her eyes squeeze shut for too long, and when a tear catches in the bags under her eyes you draw her to you gently, clasp her shoulder blades in your palms so that her breath hits the collar of your t-shirt. Arms drawn to her sides, you can feel her shutting down beside you. Right, of course, you know this. She does these things. You can feel the switches in her heart, one by one, being flicked to off.

You pull away from her long enough to look her in the eyes. She’s not crying, and you don’t know if that’s good or bad. “Spencer, hey, talk to me. What’s going on?”

“I wasn’t going to offer you pot, Jason. Doesn’t mean I don’t have a stash.” This, you expected, at least a little. You can recognize anxiety from a mile away; anxiety you know like the back of your hands. And with her history, curbing that anxiety with drugs isn’t too big a step. 

Regardless, you feign surprise at her confession. Of course, she notices. “Oh, don’t act shocked. You of all people should understand.” She pauses. “I just want to be able to sleep at night, you know?”

Your smile is resignation. Hers is a puddle ripple. “Of course, I know.” She takes your hand and leads you out of her bedroom the same way she led you in. She holds your hand all the way through the back door to the house, all the way outside. There’s a spot in her backyard where the trees part and on a night like this, cloudless and warm and inexplicably still, stars litter the sky like scattered seeds.

She tilts her head back to look up, and you try your goddamn hardest not to stare at her, brown hair falling over her shoulders because today, it’s not tied up. She’s still looking up when she starts talking, more to herself than you. Nevertheless, you are filled with that emptiness again, that swelling in your chest. And this is more than she’s ever opened up to you, and no matter whose comfort she would rather be seeking, you are glad that right now, it is you.

And anyway, if it was anyone else listening, the cricket chirps would probably drown out the sound of her voice.

“Thinking about the galaxies makes me feel so small, but in a good way. In a way like what I say or do or no matter how many times I fail or if I let A win, if he gets away with everything and kills me and kills Aria and Emily and Hanna and Ali and anyone else, all this is still going to exist. The planets will still turn like clockwork. I am not even a cog in this machine.”

She turns to look at you. It isn’t a surprise that on site, your eyes meet. “Did you know that the Milky Way has grown over time by merging with other galaxies?” She turns back to the stars. “In about five billion years, we’ll collide with Andromeda Galaxy. No matter what happens to me, the galaxy is still going to be growing. The galaxy is not even aware of you or me or Charlie or A. In a twisted kind of way, isn’t that comforting?”

You smile to yourself at her words, because of all the people to be soothed by the inner mechanics of outer space, of course it would be her. “Now that you put it that way, it is.”

You both are silent for a while. Out here, in this clearing, you cannot see either house. The crickets chirp louder when she isn’t speaking, you think.

“Do you think he could still be alive, Jason?” Something deflates inside of you when she brings you back down to orbit with her words. Because she was right—it is easy to get out of your own head by staring at the stars. It is easy to forget that instead of stargazing with someone you can turn to and kiss, you are with her. It is easy to forget that out of all the someones you could be stargazing with, you still would choose her.

You sigh. “I don’t know. If he is, I don’t think my dad knows about it. He seemed pretty genuine, for once.” She steps closer to you and you turn your face away from the night sky. When her palm rests on your cheek, your eyelids flutter closed like moths’ wings.

“You’ve been caught in the middle of so much and I am so sorry, Jason.”

You’re probably delusional for what happens next, you’re probably never going to forgive yourself the same way she will never forgive you, but the entire galaxy is above you and you are small, what happens here does not matter in the grand scheme of things, you are a guest, she has taught you that much. Your hand reaches the back of her head and your fingers tangle in her hair when you say, “You have too,” and kiss her like you have been waiting for her for a lifetime. Like you are drowning and she is air. Like keeping her close to you, keeping her locked in your arms caged around her, you can protect her, from this shadowy figure, from the horrors that keep her awake, from yourself.

The thing you try not to think about, the thing that makes you truly delusional, is that goddammit, you _swear_ she’s kissing you back.

You pull away from her as soon as those thoughts start to plague you. Because you will not do that to yourself, you will not give yourself any kind of hope. As soon as your lips leave hers, she is firing, “Why did you do that, Jason?” and your head is too muddled already to try and decipher the tone of her voice.

“I’m so sorry, Spencer, I’m so sorry…” Suddenly everyone is talking at once and your brain is whirring at a thousand thoughts per second and the crickets are chirping even louder than they were before but of course, you still hear her voice above anything else.

You don’t know if she is as frantic as you or if your own racing heart is working enough to feel like you both are caught in a flurry of emotion. “Jason, answer my question. Why did you do that?” You pull at your hair, the lip of your shirt, and finally calm down enough to realize that she doesn’t sound mad. That she doesn’t even really sound hurt.

You look up, not at her. “I thought it would go away when we learned the news about our father.” _Chirp-chirp, chirp, chirp-chirp._ “It didn’t.”

Time stills when she reaches up to cup your neck. It stops altogether when she says, “Do it again.”

Each of your joints ache like they never have before. “Spencer, it doesn’t have to happen again, we can just—”

“Do it. Again.” She raises on her toes, ever so slightly, just enough for you to lean down and press your forehead to hers, an unspoken whisper that says _You can still say no._

When she doesn’t, you tilt your face down and with a hand at her chin, angle her face up until your lips can move against hers like the push and pull of knitting needles. Like her, stepping in and out of your life, and in this instance, occupying it fully.

Supernovas explode light years above you two but the lingering kiss you place on the tip of her nose feels like an entire galaxy consuming another. The silence encompassing your figures, pressed together cheek to cheek, is deafening. She breaks it with the words, “I haven’t slept in three days.”

If it’s possible, you hug her closer. You aren’t really sure you meant for it to, but the nuzzle you give her neck must mean something because she whispers, “Will you still be here in the morning?” after your lips dot along her jawline.

You know in the morning she will probably retreat back to the flame in search of the reason for its burning. You know right now, somewhere, Toby feels a jab in his upper abdomen because you have temporarily, without his consent, passed that swelling, heavy, gray feeling along to him.

If space were to bend over backwards for anyone, it would be for her. If you were to resign yourself to accepting whatever she wants to give you, even when it isn’t nearly enough, for anyone, it would be for her.

She closes her fingers around yours and when you grab her hand to travel back into the house, you’re leading this time. On the way upstairs to her room, you tell her, “Of course.”


End file.
